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Transportation News

(3BL Media/Just Means) I've spent the summer living in historic St. Augustine, Florida. The surf is great, the people are friendly and the sun shines brightly every single day. The sun is powerful here, powerful enough it seems to produce enough solar energy for most of the nation.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Building out an electric vehicle infrastructure is a bit like building an arch. You need both sides, the vehicles and the charging stations, to be there at the same time, to support each other, to keep the whole thing from falling down. It’s been a little slow taking off. Perhaps partly because it’s not clear who is taking the lead.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - In the year 1906, Ray Stannard Baker wrote the following passage about automobiles in the book The Boy’s Book of Inventions: Stories of the Wonders of Modern Science.

“The electric vehicle which has had its most successful development in this country has its well-defined advantages and disadvantages. It is simpler in construction and more easily managed than any other vehicle: one manufacturer calls it ‘fool proof.’ It is wholly without odor or vibrations and practically noiseless. It will make any permissible rate of speed and climb any ordinary hill. On the other hand, it is immensely heavy, owing to the use of storage batteries; it can run only a limited distance without recharging…”

He goes on to say, “Indeed, all the manufacturers of electric vehicles speak with the confidence of the day when the whole of the United States will be as thoroughly sprinkled with electric charging stations as it is today with bicycle road-houses.”

A hundred years ago we were at a crossroads similar to the one we find ourselves at today, with electric vehicles vying against gasoline-powered cars. Back then, the choice was made, influenced by a good deal of lobbying and maneuvering by the oil industry. The fact that gasoline powered cars were also cheaper and didn’t have the range issues of electrics also helped to tip the scales.

So, the question is, how much have things changed? Electric cars are still more expensive and still confront the range limitation challenge that seems to be inherent in trying to store adequate energy in electrical rather than chemical form.

What has changed is the realization that widespread usage of fossil fuels has put our planet and everything living on it at risk of a destabilized climate that threatens every aspect of our life-support system.

With so much of our day to day life built around a gas powered car that can be quickly and (of late) inexpensively filled up at any of the thousands of gas stations that cover the landscape, the challenge of switching over to a completely different energy is huge.

Yes, EV prices are coming down (see Chevy Bolt) and charging stations are popping up everywhere. According to DOE, there are currently 8,983 charging stations and 22,387 charging outlets in the US. Whether that’s as many as there were bicycle roadhouses back 1906 is not clear, but unless people are convinced that it’s enough to assuage their “range anxiety,” they will hesitate to buy an EV. Roughly 120,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US last year, bringing the total up to around 280,000.

There are a couple of other dimensions to this question. One is that, unlike gasoline, people do have access to electricity at home, which is where much of the vehicle charging, at least for local trips will take place. That’s why there needn’t necessarily be as many charging stations as there are gas stations. The other dimension is the fact that not all charging stations are created equal. What varies is the amount of time required for a charge, though what is true in all cases is the fact that it will take longer to charge your car with electrons than it did to fill it with gasoline.

Most people will come to recognize that it will be worth the wait in order to maintain a livable climate, but that doesn’t mean it will be an easy adjustment.

Is there another way to do this? In a word, yes. Some areas, like Denmark, for example, are experimenting with the idea of a charged battery as a service. This is how that works. Instead of owning the battery as part of your car, the battery is a shared resource. When your charge is getting low, you pull into a station, where they lift out your battery and replace it with a fully charged one. This doesn’t take any longer than filling up a gas tanks, but it’s a different ownership model that is more in line with the sharing economy. Not all EVs are configured for this but several Nissan models are designed to work with a robotic battery switching station designed by Shai Agassi of Better Place. That same approach, by the way, was used by New York taxi companies in the early 20th century when electric cabs made a brief appearance. The other option would be to go to hydrogen fuel cell, which is being vigorously pursued by Toyota.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - As if there wasn't enough to see here already at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, the area was blessed with the appearance of a rare migrating bird, the Solar Impulse, resting up in preparation for a historic journey of truly epic proportions.The two Swiss pilots, and founders of Solar Impulse, Bertrand Piccard, and Andre Borschberg are getting ready to set out to do what no one has ever done before—to fly around the world, covering 21,000 miles in a heavier than air craft, without using a single drop of fuel, relying entirely on the power of the sun. The plane will fly both day and night using energy stored in batteries to sustain power at night till the sun reappears each morning.The plane, the Si2, is the second iteration of the Solar Impulse. Its wings, which extend 236 feet, longer than those of a Boeing 747, will be covered with 17,248 monocrystalline silicon solar cells that will provide the power. These cells were specifically developed for this craft, being extra-light, extra-thin (135 microns), highly efficient (23%) and capable of withstanding the necessary extremes in temperature that they will likely encounter.While the plane is as large as a jumbo jet. it weighs little more than a family car (5,070 pounds), itself a miracle of space age materials. The four electric motors can produce a total of 70 HP, allowing the craft to putter along at a leisurely pace of about 20 miles per hour. This lean operation allows the craft to store enough energy to stay aloft through the night, meaning it could stay aloft indefinitely were it not for the fact that the pilots need to come down for food and drink.Coming down for a pit stop, is in fact, the only way the pilots can change places since the quarters are so tight they can't switch with the cockpit closed. Each man, will typically be at the helm for 20 consecutive hours, the typical length of each leg.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Last month I wrote an essay about a vision of my city, Rochester, NY, in the year 2030. That essay won the Masdar Blogging Competition that will allow me to attend Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, which will include the World Future Energy Summit. Many of the talks and presentations will be on sustainable options for the future.

In preparation for this, I just read this post on GreenBiz where the author had interviewed a number of leading thinkers in various fields about their thoughts on what 2030 might bring.

Not surprisingly, each focused on his or her own corner of the world. For example Darrel Smith of Microsoft talked about the importance of the cloud infrastructure and the kinds of services that could grow from that. Energy consultant Matthew Norden of MNL Partners foresees a nuclear power renaissance.

That view is shared by David Friedberg, CEO of The Climate Corporation, who is a believer in liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR), a compact and purportedly safer nuclear technology that enjoys a cult-like following, at least among physicists. Friedberg acknowledges that LFTR won’t be commercially ready by 2030, but expects to see progress all the same. Friedberg is also hoping to see room temperature superconducting magnets, as well as automated agriculture and a substantial increase in vegetarianism. His company’s main focus is on agricultural technology.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) – When governments, companies, nonprofits, and individuals collaborate to support a green business, the results can surpass all expectations. Georgia has overtaken all other US markets in adopting electric vehicle technology. There are lessons to be learned for other sustainable businesses from the success of the state.

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Now that just about every carmaker has one or more electric models available, with considerable refinements coming out every year, charging stations are becoming more common, and battery technology continues to advance, why would Toyota, the world’s largest car manufacturer and leader in the hybrid market, decide to invest in a hydrogen car?

Toyota President Akio Toyoda has his reasons, many of which are as much about saving the planet as they are about earning a profit for his company. He told Bloomberg Business Week, “The automobile industry can contribute to the sustainable growth of earth itself.” The third generation family president of the company said, “At Toyota, we are looking out 50 years and even more decades into the future. I do believe that [the] fuel-cell vehicle is the ultimate environmentally friendly car. But the point is not just to introduce it as an eco-friendly car with good mileage. I wanted it to be fun to drive and interesting as a car.”

He doesn’t have a lot of true believers among his peers. The CEOs of Volkswagen, Nissan, and Tesla have all gone on record saying that the hydrogen highway was a dead end street, if not in so many words.

But Toyoda is backing up his words with the launch of the Mirai, expected to be available by the end of next year. The car is expected to sell for $57,500. Federal and State incentives could bring this down into a range comparable with an EV or a plug-in hybrid, which is pretty impressive, considering the completely new technology involved. It will have a driving range of 300 miles, will be quicker than the Prius, and will emit only water vapor and a bit of heat.

What is it about hydrogen, that, like the tortoise in the race with the hare, will allow it to win the race against the EV in the long run?

(3BL Media/Justmeans) – Air transport contributes 12 percent of all transport sources to human-induced carbon emissions. Flights produce 628 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. The aviation industry needs to find solutions to reduce its environmental footprint, particularly looking at a future where the demand for air travel is expected to grow at about four to five percent per annum over the next two decades.